Dexter's Blues

 

 

            In his own way Dexter was a bluesman. Oh, he didn’t play but he could listen and he could feel. Sometimes he thought the music ran clear down into his toes and pooled there. A lot was unstated but very deeply felt.
            He had been listening to an old guy; Snowy White, do Midnight Blues.
            It took him an hour every working day morning to drive into the ranger station in the national forest. He lived in a studio apartment in downtown Arlington. It was a nice, boring place. He never spoke to a soul there and they never spoke to him.
            Honestly, the song brought him to tears and he wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t that his life was like that. He hadn’t left some girl behind him, and then regretted the decision. He’d never had a girl. Maybe that was all it was, after all.
            Lonely Dexter Morton, National Forest Ranger trainee. Red hair. Thin, soft spoken.
            He was thinking about the girl at the campground. Marge. He wondered what she thought of himself. He wondered if she even registered that he was alive.
            Dex, as his mom called him, rolled out of bed. He padded to the kitchen area and set up a pot of coffee. Then he got into the shower. He dressed after that in his uniform, fried a couple of eggs, made two slices of whole wheat toast and buttered the heck out of them with real butter. Life was hard enough without having to eat margarine on his toast.
            He ate his breakfast in about five minutes and drank two cups of coffee with sugar and cream. He didn’t even have a cat to say goodbye to.
            Driving, he listened to some more Snowy. Why do I still have the blues? Good question. The question actually.
            Pulling into his parking spot next to Rick’s truck, he took a moment to dress his mind in its workday clothes. He tried to leave the blues in the Honda, but in the back of his mind he could still hear that guitar snarl.
            The open sign was already up inside the window next to the door. He wasn’t late. Rick was just like that. Rick always wanted to beat the clock a little.
            When he opened the office door, warmth and the smell of coffee greeted him. It was cold outside, with a few inches of frozen snow. The sky had been deeply blue, a winter blue with the light just coming up on his way in.
            Rick was seated behind his desk with a 20oz mug of his lousy coffee and a box of doughnuts. He was poking at his laptop computer with one forefinger. Must be just surfing thought Dexter.
            “You made it!” said Rick in Dexter’s general direction.
            “The road was OK,” agreed Dexter. “Good morning, Rick.” He hung his coat in the back room on a hook.
            “I have doughnuts! Help yourself,” said Rick, amiably, while chewing.
            Dexter went into the kitchen nook and got a cup of the awful coffee. He could hear Rick’s muted radio playing out in the other room. It was playing Alvin Lee, the Bluest Blues. He knew the song. It struck him as a bit old timey to use a separate radio. Most people just listen on their computer, don’t they, he thought. Well, Rick was darn near 50 years old.
            “Do you think she’s alright up there?” Dexter asked Rick. “It seems weird that she’s there when we don’t have many campers.” He chose a chocolate doughnut.
            “She’ll be going home by the end of the month,” said Rick. “Why don’t you mosey up there and see if she’s OK, cowboy?”
            “She probably has a phone,” said Dexter. “I’d feel like a goof.”
            “Nah, put your coat back on and go tell her to drain the outdoor faucet and to be sure to remember to drop off the key before she leaves,” said Rick.
            So he did put his coat back on, taking a beanie his mom had knit of black wool out of a pocket and cramming it down over his ears, he left the office. The sun was coming up, glinting off of the frozen snow. The sky was profoundly blue. His cloudy breath blew away over his head in a slight cold breeze. He could hear crows chatting somewhere up in the tree tops.
            As he walked up to the camping area he saw large footprints in the snow. They were frozen in the snow, so it had been hours, probably were made the night before and he  had a very good idea whose footprints they were. Nevertheless, he was on official business, so he trekked on.
            Dexter knocked on the blue door again. He waited, watching his breath for a minute.
            He heard her unlock the door and then it opened.
            “Dexter? Is everything OK down there?” said Marge. She looked just the same as the last time he had been there, ready to assist campers if there had been any.
            “Hi, Marge. Yeah. Rick told me to come up here and see if you were alive and to remind you to drain the outside faucet and to bring him your key when you go home for the winter.”
            “Come in. It’s cold out there. He could have phoned me,” said Marge.
            “That’s what I said, but he said to put my coat back on and come up here in person. Who am I to argue with the boss?” said Dexter.
            “Well, have a seat. Warm up for a minute. I have tea. Do you like tea?” she said.
            “Sure, thanks. I don’t mind tea. Better than Rick’s coffee!” he said.
            So, he sat on a kitchen chair beside the small fake Christmas tree as it twinkled away. She got him a mug of tea and put the sugar bowl and a spoon beside him, just in case, and took the other chair.
            “Nice basket,” said Dexter. “Did you make it?”
            “No! I don’t know how to do that! I can paint, but I can’t do that. Twigg made it for my Christmas gift,” said Marge, rather proudly.
            “He sure did a good job,” said Dexter. He drank his tea unsugared and quickly. 

            “I better go see if Rick has any other great plans for me today. Thanks for the tea, Marge. Stay warm!”
            “That’s the plan,” she said as he left.
            As he followed the big frozen footprints back down to the ranger station he thought of Marge and smiled. She seemed like a faraway landscape, warm and scented and golden. He wasn’t hearing the blues at all.

💙